Please join the Religious Studies department in celebrating Visiting Assistant Professor Keith Edward Cantú’s new book on the Śaiva yoga and global importance of the Tamil author Sri Sabhapati Swami, entitled Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami and Śivarājayoga published by Oxford University Press.
Friday, November 3, 2023
Sykes Common Room
4:30 P.M.
Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami and Śivarājayoga is the first ever monograph on a prolific but largely eclipsed nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Tamil yogin named Sri Sabhapati Swami (ca. 1828-1923/4), and on his unique English, Tamil, Hindi, and Bengali literature that taught a Sanskrit-based system of yoga known as the "Rājayoga for Śiva," the full experience of which is compared to being like a "tree universally spread." Tracing never-before-examined Indic-language sources in private archives across Tamil Nadu, India, the book also utilizes the author’s ethnographic field research between South Asia, Europe, and the United States to trace his local followers as well as appeal among global occultists outside of South Asia, including the founders of the Theosophical Society and Aleister Crowley. The book will be relevant to any scholar or practitioner alike interested in the development of yoga traditions in the modern world as well as processes of knowledge transmission across diverse cultures.